EDIT: assuming it is indeed a negative outcome and a guilty endeavor, not just apple trying to apply scare tactics to previous ex-employees
It’s a totally different thing if the Qualcomm guys they hire take gigabytes of internal data with them. That’s just plain ol’ unethical on the part of the departing employees, and, if the new firm encourages this behavior, then that makes them culpable under law. (Not sure if the latter is what’s going on, but it kinda sounds like it. I suppose if the startup deliberately picked engineers they believed would be likely to exfiltrate data, even without direct instruction to do so, that would make them culpable, too.)
It is badly off putting from the get go that a new company or hiring opportunity starts with such wrong footing… this will backfire, as it is such a deterrent.
At least me personally wouldn’t want to work for this company, nor its founders nor the people that are joining and found with dirty hands. Not there nor now nor anywhere else for the foreseeable future, no matter the amount of money. Why people risk it is beyond me.
No it's not. Stealing confidential information and trade secrets is a crime. And is punished by law.
Your reply to “karma for Apple”, kudos to you.
I find it mind boggling the lengths people go to justify theft, crime and worse while hoping they get away with it because in their heads the world is only seen as the oppressed and the oppressor, nothing else. Doing illegal things against said “oppressor” is sadly justified.
It’s not that simple.
You can have proprietary knowledge in your mind without relying upon documentation. It is still not permissible to be using that proprietary knowledge of your previous company in work you do for a new employer. (Unless you’ve been given permission to do so).
That they left such obvious evidence of their (alleged) theft of information just makes the case against them stronger.
It would be a similar situation if we were talking about classified information. You can transmit such information verbally and having knowledge of such information is equivalent to having the documents themselves.
(edited to add “alleged”)
Interesting, I guess that a some point if someone’s job is fenced out (i.e. an engineer whose work is to do V8’s and can’t work anywhere because of patents, can’t design them, can’t talk them, can’t do anything basically) then that person should be compensated for the time being?
In the video game industry, contracts imply that you can’t work for another video game company until after a year has passed since the last day on a previous one, due to competition and the fact that experience goes straight into the new one.
But this is complete bollocks, “can’t work for a year” is too vague and punishing, so nobody complies and to my understanding it is non enforceable.